anatomica, John Locke

anatomica

 

"Anatomy, no question, is absolutely necessary to a surgeon, and to a physician who would direct a surgeon in incision, trepanning, and several other operations." Locke pointed out other cases in which anatomy is useful, if not necessary, to medical practice. Then he propounded what every one now-a-days a strage heresy for such an man to hold. "But that anatomy," he said, "is like to afford any great improvements to the practice of physic, or assist a man in the finding out and establishing a true method, I have reason to doubt. All that anatomy can do is only to show us the gross and sensible parts of the body, or the vapid and dead juices, all which, after the most diligent search, will be no more able to direct a physician how to cure a disease than how to make a man: for, to remedy the defects of a part whose organical constitution, and that texture whereby it operates, he cannot possibly know, is alike hard as to make a part he knows not how is made."

 

Bourne, H. R. Fox, 『Life of John Locke, Part 1』, Kessinger Publishing, 2003.
p. 229~230